Articles of clothing and accessories typically contain one or more mechanisms that enable closure or joining of various elements. Common closure mechanisms include zippers, buttons, clasps, snaps, buckle, VELCRO and ties. All of these are useful, but suffer from disadvantages.
For instance, zippers can bind, break or become stuck in surrounding fabric, and can pinch the skin of the wearer. Buttons, snaps, ties, and similar closure mechanisms must be fastened one at a time, and do not provide a continuous seal against the elements. Velcro can become clogged with fabric or hair, and can also cause discomfort by becoming caught in the wearer's hair. Tape can leave adhesive residue on clothes or tear the fabric during removal. Furthermore, none of these mechanisms is self-closing.
By contrast, magnetic fasteners are self-closing, and have been used with some success. For instance, a magnetic button includes a female element having a magnetic core that magnetically attaches to a male element made of metal. However, this type of fastener still does not offer a continuous seal against dirt, rain and other external elements, nor does it offer any way to adjust the fit of an article of clothing or any versatility as to how the article is closed or joined with another article.
Despite the above-discussed deficiencies exhibited by magnetic buttons and the like, the use of magnets in fastening devices still holds promise. Interestingly, magnets have been shown to exhibit unique magnetic properties when assembled together in an array or other similar structure. For example, one such array, developed by Klaus Halbach, demonstrated that aligning cubic or rod-shaped magnets in a linear array in which each magnet of the array was arranged such that its magnetic field was rotated about 90 degrees in relation to its adjacent neighbor produced an array with a one-sided flux. This type of array, which exhibits twice the magnetism on one side and essentially no magnetism on the other side, has been used on refrigerator doors and maglev trains. U.S. Pat. No. 5,635,889 discloses a variation of the Halbach array in which rectangular permanent magnets are arranged in a ring structure around a rectangular gap to establish a magnetic field in the gap. However, these types of arrays are arranged solely to maximize magnetic attraction or repulsion. Using such arrays in a system for closing or joining materials may make it difficult to unjoin articles without breaking or tearing and do not offer much versatility in the way of adjustability.
What is needed is a system for closing or joining materials or articles that is simple yet versatile, enabling adjustable self closing or joining of articles in a wide variety of modes and combinations. In addition, what is needed is a system that can exploit the magnetic field properties of magnetic arrays to enable versatility and adjustability in self closing or fastening mechanisms for joining articles.